Retired Suzuki dealer Vin Cunningham has died. He was 89.
Vin spent many years as a leading dealer for the Japanese brand and then some great years with Piaggio in the nineties. He even found time to prepare race bikes for George Fogarty (Carl’s father), who lived nearby.
A friend described Vin as a first-class gentleman with a wonderful dry sense of humour.
Vin and Dymphna Cunningham started the business in 1958, using the proceeds from the sale of their BSA A10 sidecar outfit.
Vin had worked in various bike shops around Blackburn in the 50s and fancied setting up on his own. Initially the plan was to carry out repairs and sell spare parts but we soon started selling a few second-hand bikes.
In the late 1959 he took on the Vespa scooter agency. The scooter boom was just starting and Darwen had a strong Italian community at the time, many of them wanted to buy Vespas to go to work on.
In 1963 Vin was one of the first batch of dealers to sign up with Suzuki when they were actually being imported by the AMC Group (AJS /Matchless /Norton etc).
Vin Cunningham Motorcycles was one of just a few dealers chosen to sell the RE5 rotary-engined bike and again a few years later to sell the XN85 Turbo.
In the 1970s Vin’s name became synonymous with Suzuki in the north-west, partly owing to its sponsorship of local bike racers, the highlight being George Fogarty’s second place behind Joey Dunlop in the 1977 TT on an ex-works TR750.
Over the past six decades Vin’s business has held agencies for most of the major manufacturers including Suzuki, Honda, Yamaha, Moto Guzzi, Vespa, Gilera, Piaggio and Sym.
It moved to bigger premises in Blackburn in 2015 and son Ian continues the trading name of the business dealing in classic parts and repairs.
More in the October issue of BDN.
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